Our view of insects as pests and hardwired tiny robots, not adaptive, not intelligent, and certainly not conscious may be totally inaccurate.
Research is showing that insects are capable of performing amazing intellectual feats, from recognizing individuals to employing a symbolic language.
There’s even a study on monarch butterflies that shows how they use medicinal plants to treat their larva. Researchers found that certain species of milkweed, which the larva feed on, can reduce the threat of a sometime deadly parasite.
However, even more surprising, researchers found that infected female butterflies prefer to lay their eggs on plants that will make their offspring less sick, suggesting that monarchs have evolved the ability to medicate their offspring.
Researchers claim this is the best evidence yet of animals employing medication to prevent or cure disease.
When monarch butterfly larva feed on certain species of milkweed they consume a chemical known as cardenolides, which can kill a bothersome gut parasite in the butterflies known as Ophryocystis elektroscirrha. This parasite can hurt a butterfly’s ability to fly, shorten their life span and in worse-case-scenarios outright kill them.
Since female butterflies pass the parasite on to their offspring, researchers wondered if infected monarch mothers would act on the disease. Proving their hypothesis, lab tests showed that infected mothers preferred to lay their eggs on milkweed with the toxic cardenolides, while those unaffected with the parasite were ambivalent.
As a bonus to this study, researchers say that studying how animals utilize medicinal compounds in their surroundings could lead humans to discover new drugs.
(Source: mongabay.com)
